Developer Perspectives 2007

When did you start developing games?
My first game, a simple 2D racing game was made in Logo back in 1994/5 but I didn't really went back to game programming until uDG 2004.

What are your priorities now?
Trying to figure out a way to sleep only 4 hours a day, so I can have some free time.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
First two years of university courses: wasted time, last four: useful, but not as much as I expected. Reading Inside Macintosh and learning all the secrets of the Toolbox & the Memory Manager, and moving to Cocoa a few months later: priceless!

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Ha! If you had said five months... I'd still wouldn't have any idea.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Prince of Persia? In grayscale. Some F1 game that ran in CGA mode (or was it EGA? 4 colors) Well, that's all I had access to for a while, so it was "state of the art" from my point of view anyway.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
I love how fast hardware is evolving, as for GUIs, I'm not sure more animation (as in Core Animation) is really a step forward. I'd like to see more "sound" based interfaces, basically voice command recognition that actually works, plus voice synthesis in other languages than english. I'd like to go home after work, and ask out loud: "any calls/mails/etc?" and have my Mac answer back, without having to actually go, look at the screen, click-click-click. Yes, I want Apple to finally make the Knowledge Navigator! (without the silly avatar...). Not as the main interface, but as an additional interface, some things are inherently visual/easier done on a GUI.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Flashier GUIs!

What are your priorities now?
I'm working with Unity now, so I have a greater focus on gameplay and visuals than on programming the OS compatibility end of things. I'm more interested in the end result than the process of making the game.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
I feel like I've learnt a lot of things which weren't very useful in the long run. For example, QuickDraw 3D, Carbon and so on. It has probably all been helpful in terms of broadening my experience as a programmer, though..

My success in two uDevGames contests went a long way to giving me the confidence to stick with game development. Even though it takes me forever to get anything done, I can look back at those games and think "this is what I can do if I try hard enough".

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
My vision doesn't really stretch that far. I'm just thinking more of the same. Hopefully I'll have completed some games by then, and I'll have more sophisticated ones in the pipeline.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
The Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum, followed by the Amiga. Assembly language all the way... shame I didn't learn assembly language back at that point in time. There was only so much you could do with Basic on an 8 bit machine.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
I don't know... I don't pay much attention to the cutting edge. Current computer hardware can already handle most of the things I want to do.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
I'd really like to see more development of convincing character AI and dynamic story generation in games. I can't really see that happening before the end of the decade, but you never know.

When did you start developing games?
mid-90's. First shareware release was Thrones around '98.

What are your priorities now?
Family, consulting, game coding, and teaching; roughly in that order.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Very good. I keep the day job to provide the cake, use games to provide the icing, and participate in uDG-like contests as an excuse to try out new fun things (whether that be technologies or game genres).

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
More of the same. I've found a comfy little niche to live in, and a little stability will help my family more than a new job or more money would.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus was the bible, Castles: Siege and Conquest was inspirational.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
The more a technology becomes easily available and used by everyone else, the more important is it for us to differentiate our games from everyone else.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Apple will become more draconian in their business practices. I love them, but it seems to be the inevitable fate of any business as they get bigger and more bloated.

-How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Helped me ace my programming design courses, definately not a bad thing

-What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Not School....?

-What state was the art of game development in when you started?
uDevGames2002

-What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Somebody threw Moore's law out the window....

-What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
.NET will become usefull? The next version of windows will have been promised to come out three times already... And my iPhone will have a Quad Xeon and 50 hours of full battery life.

- When did you start developing games?
Around 1990, when I wrote a hangman game in Amstrad CPC Basic. I started lots of games back then, but usually got stuck after the main menu / define controls bits. After losing the Amstrad, I didn't know how to go about learning programming for Windows (my Dad's platform of choice, sadly) so I was reduced to trying to make the Quake engine do things it wasn't intended for. After learning C at uni in 2001 or so I gradually drifted back into programming.

- What are your priorities now?
Still trying to finish a project for a change. And beer.

- How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
After a lot of time spent trying to achieve things that should be easy, I'm starting to find some frameworks that I can get on with, so I'm feeling a lot more positive now. Finally abandoning Carbon and learning Objective-C/Cocoa was an epiphany.

- What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Wondering where the last five years went. And wishing my employers had never invested in Windows Vista (I know I'll lose that fight eventually)

- What state was the art of game development in when you started?
The border flashed while you loaded your game off tape, and the first two minutes of the process were taken up by loading a fancy full-screen image, which would draw one pixel at a time. And the the loading process would fail and you'd have to try again.

- What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Amazing. My G4 Mac Mini is going to be so jealous when I upgrade. And the border of my screen no longer flashes when I'm loading software. We are running out of oil though.

- What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
With a bit of luck I might have finished my current project. Apple will probably have deprecated my base code by then though.

When did you start developing games?
Started with Hypercard in the early 90's, picked up OpenGL around 1999-2000, and my first release (Kill Dr. Cote) was in 2004.

What are your priorities now?
My main priority now is getting back into the indie scene with enough money to stay there. I also am part of The Best Damn Podcast Ever, which has also been a lot of fun. Aside from that, getting my damn website redesigned and back up.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
uDevGames 2004 was probably the most creative 3-month adrenaline rush of my life. After that the experiences have been a mixed bag, but each one of them necessary. Since uDG, I've been on a tour-de-force of the industry, from publishing to full-time job to independent contractor. From all that I've been trying to figure out where exactly my place in this industry is.

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Rocking the indie scene, and rocking it hard. The streets will flow with the blood of the unbeliever!

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
When I started with Hypercard, the SNES was the machine putting stars in my eyes, which I guess I would call the golden age of 2D games. On the Mac side, Marathon was rocking my face.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Unbelievable. The amount and quality of libraries, engines, middleware, etc. out there is amazing.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
I still think the whole next-gen thing will hit a plateau, and we'll see improvements start to focus on other areas of game development. Things like XBLA will become more popular, both for players who want a quick gaming fix and for developers, who will enjoy the low development costs and time, which allow for more original/experimental ideas. And finally, one of my games just might cause a small part of the internet to explode.

When did you start developing games?
1982-ish, on my family's Apple ][. Wrote two levels of an unmemorable game called Bomb-Run, never finished. But in '84 I was reading about this new thing called Macintosh that would be available soon, and I doodled a design for a game that would use the nifty high-res, black-on-white graphics, and the mouse. I consider it to be my first real game. Started work on it using Apple Pascal on a 128K Mac. Little did I know the game wouldn't actually be done until 1992 (3D Brick Bash).

What are your priorities now?
Full-time job, family.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
I've been very fortunate, won a number of prizes, even gotten paid for one of my games. Heck, the fact that I've finished so many games is something to be proud of. And yet, sometimes instead of enjoying the ride I wonder why I feel so small-time. Somehow I've not been willing to do whatever it takes to market and sell myself to the next level. Too tired, too old, too attached to the comforts of having a stable job in a different industry? Or maybe my definition of success is too rigid- game development is not my primary job, my games don't earn money, I am not particularly well-known. Which of those things do I want, if any? I'm still not sure.

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Recalling my best game (either Pawns or A Tack) and waxing nostalgic about when I was in my prime. Or, celebrating the recent release of my best game ever. Not sure which.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Apple ][, BASIC, 6502 assembly, sprites. It led to surprisingly palletable games but the sound except for the abysmal sound. (Which is one reason I suppose I loved Infocom text adventures so much.)

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Great. Lots of free and inexpensive software to take the drudgery out of it. The barriers to entry are very low. (Remember when you had to license Mac OpenGL from a 3rd party? Or, how much basic API documentation used to cost?) Artists are much more directly plugged into the process. And the machines have power that often allows the game developer can save time and/or money by working at a higher level. I only wish I had time to learn and use more of what's out there.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
I'm just trying to get through this year (turning 40.)

-When did you start developing games?
My first efforts were using SEUCK on the C64. From there to AMOS and Blitz Basic on the Amiga and from there to C on Macs.

-What are your priorities now?
Spending time with my wife. Surviving the crazy world of London and continuing to build my career as a senior digital designer. Seeing more of the UK (just got back from a glorious week in Devon/Cornwall). Game development - down the list but still occupying an important space in my head.

-How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Slope Rider was a great experience, everything else felt like good background work towards that. Since then I've fluctuated between highly motivated and just too busy with other things to even think about games.

-What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Hopefully still doing game development as a hobby with smaller scale projects. Hopefully still picking up Flash game work in my professional life.

-What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Games were often created by one person, doing design, art and code. Those were the glory days.

-What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
More resources than ever before for Mac so that's good news. There is some trend to push the extraordinary possibilites of current technology to focus on fun, freash ideas which is good, but there could be more.

-What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
More graphical enhancements and a few gems of real playability.